This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: New York Observer
May 23, 2007
“I seem to be the last man standing here,” said Jeff Roth. Dressed in a sharp gray suit with a white handkerchief peeking from the pocket, Mr. Roth was 24 feet below sidewalk level, in the depths of the New York Times Building at 229 West 43rd Street.
Mr. Roth, a group-three clerk for The Times, is the keeper of the paper’s morgue, the files of millions of clippings that served as the institutional memory for a century. “There were probably 50 guys like me at one time, who knew wher
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
May 23, 2007
Last week Baylor University posted on its Web site the eight-minute video that accompanied its apparently unsuccessful proposal to house the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
Among many other things, the video features Orel Hershiser, the star baseball pitcher, suggesting that a Little League field be included within the library complex. Mr. Bush was a part owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team in the years before he sought elective office. The video was sent to the
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
May 23, 2007
Term-paper and essay-writing services join prostitutes, firearms dealers, and hacking sites in Google's forbidden-advertising zone, the company announced on Tuesday.
Academic paper-writing services, or "paper mills," will no longer be able to buy search terms in the Google AdWords program, and thus their ads will no longer pop up in the "sponsored links" sections of a Google search-results page. (Links to those sites could still be found among the results on the
Source: NYT
May 23, 2007
Three days after a police raid touched off a violent confrontation between the Lebanese Army and a militant Palestinian group, Fatah al Islam, the first clear look inside the camp on Tuesday presented stark reminders of Lebanon’s bloody past.
And ominous warnings from Palestinian groups in other camps as well as a suicide bombing in an apartment in Tripoli raised fears that the conflict could spread to other parts of the country and destabilize the already shaky government of Prime
Source: http://english.donga.com
May 23, 2007
Prestigious universities located in Seoul and its adjacent areas such as Korea University and Yonsei University have decided to require applicants to take an exam on national history as a mandatory subject on their college entrance examinations. This will start in 2010 when current first-year high school students are entering into college.
Since only Seoul National University has required applicants to take a history exam, there have been a few students who chose history among other
Source: NYT
May 22, 2007
In the latest round of publishing one-upmanship, the two publishers of rival biographies of Hillary Rodham Clinton have moved up their on-sale dates once again.
Alfred A. Knopf plans to start selling “A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton” by Carl Bernstein on June 5, and, on June 8, Little, Brown & Company will publish “Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” by Jeff Gerth, a former reporter for The New York Times, and Don Van Natta Jr., a T
Source: NYT
May 22, 2007
As Rudolph W. Giuliani runs for president, his image as a chief executive who steered New York through the disaster of Sept. 11 has become a pillar of his campaign. But one former member of his inner circle keeps surfacing to revisit that history in ways that are unflattering to Mr. Giuliani: Jerome M. Hauer, New York City’s first emergency management director.
In recent days, Mr. Hauer has challenged Mr. Giuliani’s recollection that he had little role as mayor in placing the city’s
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
May 22, 2007
Oxford University Press has suspended sales of a gazetteer published in 2005 after an outcry over errors that was led by historians and government officials in the southern state of Karnataka, the Khaleej Times reports. Among other errors, the book, the Concise Dictionary of World Place Names, says that the local language in Bangalore, Karnataka’s capital, is Bengali. Actually the language is Kannada. Bengali is spoken in Bangladesh and neighboring regions of northeastern India.
The episod
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
May 22, 2007
The University of California appears to have backed down in its dispute with the family of Jacques Derrida, agreeing to drop a lawsuit against his widow and to relinquish its claim to some of the papers of the late French philosopher and literary theorist.
The university filed a motion to dismiss its lawsuit last Friday. An agreement still has to be signed by the Derrida family and approved by the court, according to a university spokeswoman.
Last November the universit
Source: Detroit Free Press
May 22, 2007
God, family and country leap from the pages in the just-released diaries of former President Ronald Reagan, but the cover-to-cover theme in Reagan’s writings from the world stage is his wife, Nancy.The 784-page “The Reagan Diaries,” edited by Douglas Brinkley, made its debut Monday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, a day before the $35 book’s national release. Nancy Reagan placed two of her late husband’s five maroon, leather-bound diaries in a display case.
Source: AP
May 21, 2007
ATLANTA -- Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday his remarks were ''careless or misinterpreted'' when he said the Bush administration has been the ''worst in history'' for its impact around the world.
Speaking on NBC's ''Today,'' Carter appeared to retreat from a statement he made to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for a Saturday story in which he said: ''I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history.''
Source: NYT
May 21, 2007
Nothing rattles Washington quite like a good violation of unwritten rules, especially when the violator and the violated are both presidents (past and present, respectively).
Former President Jimmy Carter was cited for a doozy over the weekend when he called the Bush administration “the worst in history” for its impact around the world. Though Mr. Carter tried to take it back on Monday, saying on the “Today” show that his remarks were “careless or misinterpreted” and that he was “no
Source: Juan Cole at Informed Comment (blog)
May 22, 2007
Here is a chart of guerrilla attacks in Iraq since 2003 through April 2007. It is from a GAO document on Iraq,"GAO-07-677 Iraq Electricity and Oil," p. 34. The original is in .pdf format here. I think it says it all. Note that all the activity related to the"surge" seems to have gotten the mayhem nearly back down to what it was in . . . July 2006, that veritable paradise of communal harmony.
Source: Hartford Courant
May 22, 2007
A United Nations committee accused Japan of trying to whitewash its past practice of forcing women to become sex slaves for Japanese Imperial army soldiers, and urged Tokyo to help surviving victims.The criticism by the U.N. Committee Against Torture comes after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe set off a furor by saying there was no proof the government forced thousands of women from Asia and elsewhere to work as prostitutes for front-line troops during World War II.
Source: IHT
May 22, 2007
In a grove of evergreens on the edge an old insane asylum's grounds lie the bodies of 1,000 people who were once called inmates. They died at the Hastings Regional Center from 1888 to 1959, and a small gray stone marks each grave. There are no names, birth dates or death dates. Just patient numbers.
Now, mental-health advocates, historians and others are trying to get U.S. states to make the names public.On Monday, advocates for the release were handed a blow wh
Source: ABC News
May 21, 2007
Although nearly three years have passed since the death of her husband, former President Ronald Reagan, former first lady Nancy Reagan is still healing emotionally, she told "Good Morning America's" anchor Diane Sawyer.
"I keep thinking of all those people who said time ... it'll be much better in time," Reagan said. "Well, not for me. If anything, -- it's gotten worse. ... I miss him more. I'm remembering more little things that we did together. It's harder
Source: ABC News series on slavery
May 21, 2007
[This is the story of one of an estimated 15,000 slaves in the US.]
Evelyn Chumbow was once a slave, but not in some distant country. She worked right here in the United States.
Chumbow, now 21, was brought to suburban Maryland in 1996 from her native Cameroon by Theresa Mubang. Mubang promised Chumbow's family that if 11-year-old Evenly came to America, she would have the prospect of a bright future and a first-rate education, as she had been a top student in her nativ
Source: WaPo
May 21, 2007
In their annual examination with the flexible retrospectoscope, medical experts last week took on the case of Abraham Lincoln at the 13th Historical Clinicopathological Conference, sponsored by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs hospital.
Previous exercises have sought to diagnose illness or determine cause of death of famous people with incomplete medical records. They include Alexander the Great (typhoid fever complicated by Guillain-Barre syndr
Source: Azzaman.com
May 19, 2007
U.S. occupation troops forced their way into the offices of the Antiquities Department with its chief denouncing the move as “a violation.”
In a statement to Azzaman, Abbas al-Hussaini, said the raid was the second in a week. Earlier a force of four U.S. military vehicles had forced its way into the department’s offices.
“This action is a violation of the Iraqi ancient heritage,” Hussaini said.
Source: Guardian
May 21, 2007
NEW YORK -- Former US president Jimmy Carter unleashed a torrent of criticism against George Bush and Tony Blair over the weekend, in which he accused the Bush presidency of being the "worst in history" and said Mr Blair's support had been abominable and subservient.Even for a former politician with a reputation for plain talking, Mr Carter's blazing criticism took observers by surprise and had the Republican leadership responding in equally harsh measure. The Whit
